


Kisses

by Twilit



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-20
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2018-05-02 12:22:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5248124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twilit/pseuds/Twilit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Language, communication, takes many forms, but at the heart of it is a need breach the cell of night that compromises our consciousness, that weighty burden pressing down on us from inside our selves. We let a little out, we let a little in, and in doing so chip away at these confining walls. Communication can take many forms, but are there any sweeter than a kiss?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. We Can Never Be Together

On a disc hovering in the void of paradox-

No.

On a disc in the voi-

No.

On what was once a disc in the void of paradox space a riot of last-ditch creation has sprawled out. Haphazard rooms and blocks and hives and towers erupt from the infertile soil of that disc, walling off the SBURB logo, the Final Reward for not only beating the game, but defeating the Demon at the End of Time. And no one wants to claim it.

Tragic.

A body rolls over in a chamber crafted from build and other sundry grists but it does not get far. The arm around its middle does not let go. Rose Lalonde sighs.

“I am not going to precipitate a mass exodus right now, Kanaya.”

“But that is definitely a thing you will do at some point.”

“Yes. But right now, I need to use the washroom, so…” Gently she lifts Kanaya’s arm from her middle and lays it firmly down on the bed. Beds are not for sleeping these days. Neither an immortal human at the height of her powers nor a vampiric troll matron have any need of rest. Physical rest. Spiritual or emotional, on the other hand…

It has been a long stretch of time since they discovered the final horror awaiting them at the completion of this hellish game. A stretch of time turned desperate at the revelation that players would be sent to separate reward universes based on their particular games’ UUIDs. No amount of arcane prognostication or hacking was able to reveal a way around their fate.

And so dozens of closely-formed relationships would be sundered. Unless of course, they stayed here forever. They had the resources to do it, it was argued. And sure enough, this mad construct erupted out of the void while the Lands Of orbited in the distance.

But it can’t be sustained, and Rose knows it. Besides the madness of isolation and pedestrian drama, they had responsibilities. They were the last living of their kind, in any universe. She knows it. And she knows Kanaya knows it. Her dead blood compels her. She’s seen her girlfriend, her matesprit stare at the matriorb in stasis.

This center cannot hold.

But that is for another time. Rose isn’t going to push their leaders into action just yet. She has a lifetime or more of loving to get out of the way. When she returns to the respiteblock, it is with one thought on her mind and defiance on her lips. Kanaya notices her approach and sits up at the look in her eye.

_We can never be together,_ they think.

_So what,_ their kiss demands.


	2. I've Missed You

You cannot escape the Game.

Rose knows that now. No matter how many times you restart, lose or even win, the Game gets its own back.

She lived a good life, all light and luck and devious wisdom. A good god, she liked to think. There was some capriciousness, some deific vanity and arrogance but she liked to think that, on the whole, she was good and just to her people. Subtle, too.

They forgot about her, naturally. Something like death took her.

Or perhaps it didn't. They found the just/heroic clause was still operational, to John's just dismay. In any case, it's something that she is blessedly not-clear on in her current... state. However it came to be. A saved image of her consciousness, a reconstruction by a cold, pernicious program. A darkly luminous, amorphously tentacular mass. Roselalonde, the Author Ephemeral. Denizen of a Land Of.

You cannot escape the Game.

\--

Holes in her omniscience are to be cherished and surprises all the more, few and far between as they are. Her consciousness spawns fractured and whole across multiple sessions, concurrent and simultaneous. As soon as a universe compiles a Game, a Denizen is generated for each generated Land. (Well, usually. The Game is self-replicating; there are bugs) But spawning in a paradox space is a lonely thing. Creatures and Consorts are simple things and while they can be adorable, even entertaining, they are utterly predictable to an oracle.

Her fellow denizens are interesting at times, and the lack of any repetition among them between countless sessions suggests a horrific scale to the Game's replication. So it is not surprising that in time, in no time at all, really, she becomes lonely. And in her loneliness, issues some poor would-be Hero the quest:

Bring me my lover.

\--

She is almost surprised that the Game allows it. But she is privy to some of its code and knows her power, her parameters. As a construct based on a God-Tier player she has more universal system resources to play with than most (and less than a few). But in turn, her ability to grant them to players is massively restricted. Truly impossible tasks must be accomplished.

That quest seems to qualify. You cannot escape the Game, after all, and it will get its own back.

\--

Would-be heroes essentially face a trifecta of tasks: Find out who her lover is, find out where they are and find a way to them and back. The impossible times three.

The last, she knows very well how to accomplish, having crossed sessions before. Too, she knows how she would go about the first. Between lore hidden about a Land Of, pre-game online searching and hacking game files it shouldn't be too difficult (read: nigh impossible for any being of less than titanic determination) to find references to her lovers.

She wonders which the Game would accept. Kanaya, first and long-lost? Jade, stars of her night sky? One of her brief mortal affairs? Dave, perhaps, last passionate refuge against the slow fading? She would welcome any one of them.

It is the second task that she cannot process. She has no information in any of her expanding spheres of knowledge, in any of her databases on how to find an object in another session. It is frustrating because she should, because players must be able to. Which only leaves one conclusion.

The game, escaping, et cetera, et cetera. You understand.

\--

They fail in their countless numbers. Because of this, she is distantly and darkly proud that her session was able to complete at least one Denizen quest.

Sometimes they do not even know they can ask for her help. They fear her or attack her and in doing so waste both parties' chances. Others try and in the end fail. Others see the impossibility, decide playing by the rules is for suckers and try to wreak unholy hell upon the game (these are secretly her favourites). Others still see their task and waste away at the futility of it. And a very small few win without her.

As a strange assembly of a knowledge deity's saved state, universal system code and some form of consciousness, there is very little that can surprise her and while the fumbling or achievements of players can often entertain, she spends most of her time slumbering, building universes in her mind and writing stories in the lines between.

So sometimes, very rarely, she missing something. A new song, a neat trick. A path through the woods. And so, one moment, Roselalonde comes to and a Denizen is before her. A slender form carved of marble, draped in shimmering fabrics with a prismatic waterfall for hair.

Kanayamaryam, the Font of Rainbows.

You cannot escape the game, but you can outplay it.

\--

Her shock is such that the Land of Stairs and Chandeliers stops, stutters for a moment. The now-Hero disappears as their contract executes and the once-god-now-more realizes the Game's final cruel trick: she can never know how this was done.

But this, this is enough. It takes a force of will she has not managed in a span of time literally uncountable by conscious minds, but she begins to force her amorphous being into the shape of nineteen-year old girl. It does not go well - that time is long past, but as something resembling an orange-hooded girl takes shape out of abyssal miasma, the marble-formed woman sucks in an unnecessary breath, freezing.

A moment that stretches into the eternity of paradox space whirling above them, then,

“The poor dear could not even remotely pronounce your name correctly, love.”

Rose’s heart soars at the endearment and rushes forward in an abandonment of deific dignities to leap into Kanaya’s arms. Her lips press against ones formed of cold marble, but it is not long, mere fractions of an instant, before the pale stone evaporates and black alien lips kiss back. As the marble and rainbows disintegrate into the ether, their kiss speaks for them:

_I’ve missed you._

**Author's Note:**

> So a while back, I reblogged one of those writing prompt thingies on Tumblr and shockingly _someone actually gave me a prompt_. It took me days to write it, because my time is nil, but here you go. A little something to tide you over until I can find the time and energy to finish The Gospel.
> 
> Prompts here:
> 
> http://bluebirdofbitterness.tumblr.com/post/131190804620/kanaya-rose-number-25-we-can-never-be  
> http://bluebirdofbitterness.tumblr.com/post/131775297145/number-9-or-7-whichever-you-prefer-rosemary
> 
> Thank you for your patience.


End file.
